Risk and fun: Dan Kiley's interior landscape for the Ford Foundation

Risk and fun: Dan Kiley's interior landscape for the Ford Foundation

In 1968, Dan Kiley’s atrium garden for the Ford Foundation Headquarters in New York City opened as the first major interior landscape in the US. It was a self-continued biosphere engineered for human occupation (in this way distinct from greenhouses and conservatories). This essay examines Kiley’s c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in the history of gardens & designed landscapes 2020-04, Vol.40 (2), p.95-109
Main Author: Choi, Danielle Narae
Format: Article
Language:eng
Subjects:
20th century
Biosphere
Botanical gardens
Horticulture
Landscape architecture
Modernism
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:In 1968, Dan Kiley’s atrium garden for the Ford Foundation Headquarters in New York City opened as the first major interior landscape in the US. It was a self-continued biosphere engineered for human occupation (in this way distinct from greenhouses and conservatories). This essay examines Kiley’s consultants, reference materials, and planting palette to reposition the garden as a cosmopolitan horticultural project that synthesizes diverse frameworks of modernism and ecology of the mid-20th century. The garden was not only a revelatory environment of city-dwellers, but also a cultural artifact of the environmental era wherein new technologies linked local phenomena to planetary forces. This expanded context for the garden offers new perspectives on the historic treatment of landscape design in wholly constructed environments.
ISSN:1460-1176
1943-2186